00:43:06 · Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble
[00:43:06] S0: A lot has changed, but lot hasn't changed. Yeah. And I think maybe that's the spirit of where you're going. I, you know, I I think that the core capabilities of what makes a great finance person are still there. How you actually, you know, leverage the tools at your disposal to make, you know, better decisions is, you know, always gonna be this, like, moving target for you. Like, the unlock that SQL was for me is, you know, now, you know, net... A net net new unlock with, like, AI as as a tool and capability driver for me. So I, you know, I I I think a great finance person has longevity if they continue to adapt. [00:43:43] S1: Which, you know, we wrote this piece. We said... It was titled You Need a New CFO. The main point was that the mind... There's a mindset shift. So whether the individual actually has changed, it's the... That they have to think more automation first, either build or buy the tools depending on what's what's available and what makes sense. But it's really automation first. I'm curious if you think the profile, either of you, of a CFO in the next year or two is going to change in any way. Or to your point, it's kind of the same the same dimensions that are important, but maybe just the the mindset continues to evolve.
00:44:16 · Praveer Melwani
[00:44:16] S0: If I were to give advice to anyone, it's like hire someone who feels a similar amount of business ownership and wants to be the, you know, an operational rigor as you as the CEO does. They wanna win. They wanna win no matter which way possible. They have a set of tools that they're gonna use in an understanding of a P and L to go and orchestrate that change. But you truly want like a business leader versus like, you know, someone who, you know, like I was sharing earlier, like a traffic cop. Right? That is just not... And yes, I think there's a lot of things that you're gonna need to have as commonplace and solid understanding of, like all the accounting fundamentals, your ability to actually go and orchestrate a planning process. I actually think the things that, like, make people truly unique in this role, it's like, do you understand the business? Can you go and make make change happen? And can you get... Can you simplify the understanding of how the business model works so that others are all running in the same direction?
00:45:09 · Ivan Makarov, Praveer Melwani
[00:45:09] S2: Yeah. And I think it's true whether we're talking about a public company like Figma, we're talking about a seed stage or a series a startup that's starting to scale their go to market and getting traction, is that that's what the founders and the CEOs really need from finances, that extra business opinion opinion on the business and insights that are easier to get, but also still, you go back to the basics, like customers. Do you understand the customers? Do you understand the behaviors? Do you understand the metrics that come from that inputs, outputs? I think that's that's... Will always be the same in what we expect. [00:45:42] S0: Yeah. Maybe the thing I'd add, like, I I I do think, like, you know, creativity is important, not like, you know, go and create like a funky set of metrics creative, but like how can you actually go and think about your business in a slightly different light and use that as like the way that you go and drive change and be opinionated. And I, you know, I actually don't know how, you know, I try to do I try to do this. I don't know if I'm doing it as much as I, you know, could. But if I come up with these ideas, if I can come up with different ways of thinking about things, I actually think that... I think some great ideas can come from your finance organization. And if you really set them up well and right, they can be they can be this, like, layer within your organization that's just as impactful and really driving a lot of the internal strategy as well.
00:45:42 · Praveer Melwani, Seema Amble
[00:45:42] S0: Yeah. Maybe the thing I'd add, like, I I I do think, like, you know, creativity is important, not like, you know, go and create like a funky set of metrics creative, but like how can you actually go and think about your business in a slightly different light and use that as like the way that you go and drive change and be opinionated. And I, you know, I actually don't know how, you know, I try to do I try to do this. I don't know if I'm doing it as much as I, you know, could. But if I come up with these ideas, if I can come up with different ways of thinking about things, I actually think that... I think some great ideas can come from your finance organization. And if you really set them up well and right, they can be they can be this, like, layer within your organization that's just as impactful and really driving a lot of the internal strategy as well. [00:46:33] S1: I will say at the investor and board level, we are seeing a much deeper set of analysis come through or the rapid iteration. You know, before it used to be, oh, we have all these questions at the board meeting or before, and then it's a... You know, the team needs to run and cycle through that. That process has just short circuited and hopefully is less painful on the finance team side. Last question for you, Ivan. As our portfolio companies or just companies in general come to you and say, where do I start in terms of automation? What do you give them as advice?
00:46:33 · Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov
[00:46:33] S1: I will say at the investor and board level, we are seeing a much deeper set of analysis come through or the rapid iteration. You know, before it used to be, oh, we have all these questions at the board meeting or before, and then it's a... You know, the team needs to run and cycle through that. That process has just short circuited and hopefully is less painful on the finance team side. Last question for you, Ivan. As our portfolio companies or just companies in general come to you and say, where do I start in terms of automation? What do you give them as advice? [00:47:05] S2: I think it's kind of the same place where we always started. You start with integrity of data. You have to figure out if you actually have good access to data if you're tracking things. Many many of the times, especially early stage companies, they don't even track anything, and so you have to set that up. And that often goes against the priorities that maybe the first finance hire has, like, oh, I gotta close my book sometime, gotta send the board update, all of that, actually, you can't even do that until you're on the solid foundation. You might sometimes have to set it, you might have to rebuild it, You might have to change things. We've had a number of people that came in, especially now very quickly, you can realize within several weeks that maybe the revenue is calculated in a way that's not how it should be calculated for that business model. [00:47:44] S1: More more creative ARR Yeah. At the early stage than I've ever
00:47:44 · Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov
[00:47:44] S1: More more creative ARR Yeah. At the early stage than I've ever [00:47:49] S2: seen before. For sure. It's changing fast too. It starts with data, and then based on that, you really kinda create the reporting rigor, you create the metrics, and then you create the story. I think one of the things too, Praveer, was, especially you've been on that journey as a CFO, like storytelling becomes really, really important once you have your eyes set on the IPO, and you have to be all telling the same story. I feel like that has moved to earlier and earlier stages, because you expect to tell the story now in fundraising for series A, series B, and not just the story of what the product vision could be, but story with the numbers, and what the what the business could really be like. And that's gotten easier, but it's also gotten harder because I think a